Poetry Magazines - The best collection of poetry magazines online - Simon Armitage

I

The Exxon Valdez, undone by drink, is
Rent, oil blackens ice cold water, slithers
Ever widening, coats rocks on the shoreline’s
Black lapping boundary
The indolent camera casts a cold eye
Birds’ wings are stuck in slick; they cannot fly
They thrash in watery death or soon will die
Unaided. Only a frightening thing, deus-ex-machina
As a middle-aged fat person armed with soapy
Water will save a few, her dreams forever torn
By blackened flapping wings. But she was there and
Heard the comments of the fishermen, how fat she was
How ugly were her gloves, her boots

A child may say to Rosemary “I don’t want to stay here.”
“I want to go with you.” She may take your hand
And whisper, “I want to go with you.”
Tell you confusing stories of what happened to her
How she came to be torn, but she nay say
“I want to go with you”, not remember dates
And thus evade the law
Others, worse, will fear you, only think of change as

Worse. They hide behind the man who did this
Struggle so hard who’d think they had such strength
Won’t see you, flail little fists with serious intent to wound
Taking a child from her sexual abuser takes long hours
“Did you do a removal?” the supervisor asks
“Yes,” the worker says. She is tired, wears polyester
Which you may or may not come to terms with

II

Put aside The Best Kept Secret of sex abuse
Call its author from a crowded room
At work. “It’s brilliant, Florence,” tell her
Hear her burry voice expressing thanks, its cadence

Butler, Josephine, pgs. 68-70, 72
“Born ... in 1828 ... married to ...
Her most ardent supporter ... devoting herself
To the eradication of [child prostitution]
In Parliament...she announced that [some of] the very men
She was addressing [would pay] twenty five guineas
[To rape] a twelve-year-old virgin

“I will set a flood light upon your doings,” she said

“During one tour, Butler was ‘covered
With flour, excrement, her clothes had been torn
From her body, her face discolored with dried blood and
She was so bruised that she could hardly move’.”

“Fallen men”, whose docks made hard by childish pain. Repent

Jefferson Market Library computers tell me
No copy of A Singular Iniquity--The Campaign
of Josephine Butler exists in the public library
Computers cannot be said to lie

So denied access to fact I then imagine
She had a good sense of humor, an
Energetic walk, gave good parties
Wrote letters to childhood friends she had not irked
Of the roses in her garden, sang often though off-key
Could be authentically impossible
And when she died in 1907, would have
Had more joy than most

I want to make you a lighthouse of words
I think you’d have been my friend had I lived then
After all in ‘95, I can call two Florences, Kennedy
And Rush
Both of whom can tell the truth and sometimes scare the devil
Out his mind (the devil does not move to shame)

Lady bird, lady bird
What did you wear

Beat Beat transcendent wings